Mass Email - need to send to all users, but limited to 1,000 per hour

[andrewilley]

In advance of GDPR-day on Friday, I need to mass email my whole forum userbase about Terms and Policy changes - which is only about 4,000 users, but I need to keep the send rate to under 1,000 emails (which includes any expanded BCC copies) per hour.

I've been searching around the forums for what seems to be days now, but there seem to be dozens of different opinions on which settings to adjust and why, and it varies by phpBB version too; I'm running 3.2.1, using an external SMTP process rather than the internal mail function. I wonder if someone could explain it a bit more clearly for me?

First, I think I need to disable 'Send Immediately', as otherwise it will try to send the whole 4,000 emails when I press the Submit button, and the web page would almost certainly time out. By turning that mode off, the whole batch will be generated and queued to be triggered in small batches in the background when other users happen to access the forum index page.

Email Package Size in ACP Email Settings is currently set to 0 - but I'm not even sure if this affects the Mass Email function anyway? Opinions seem to differ, some people say set it zero, others to much larger than total number of emails wanted.

Some advise changing the value in /includes/acp/acp_email.php for $max_chunk_size to less than 50. Is this the number of BCC copies added to each email, or the number of separate emails in each batch? And if the latter, how to I set a BCC limit? However that option now seems to be a database entry in the phpbb_config table, email_max_chunk_size, which is currently set to 50 on my board.

Also in phpbb_config is the queue_interval value, set to 60 seconds on my board, which I believe is the minimum delay between firing off each new group of messages (which could be longer than that delay of course, depending on how long it is before someone new accesses the forum index page and triggers the next job).

So, basically how do I trigger a Mass Email task to reliably send no more than 15 emails (or 1 email with 15 BCCs) every minute? I don't mind if it takes a while to send all 4,000, but I do want them all gone in a day or two with no risk of losing any.

Andre

[</Solidjeuh>]

For mass email i use: https://mailchimp.com
Can mail 12.000 users each month with the free plan.
And you can link it to your forum mail address.

[2600]

Does the paid for service require you to pay in bananas?

[andrewilley]

Hmm, not very sure about the idea of passing my entire userbase's email addresses to any third party - which presumably has to cover its costs in some way, even on a 'free' account. One of the things I plan to mention in the email about Privacy is that I would never pass people's details on to a third-party, so it seems to rather go against the grain to do so in the very email in which I'm promising not to do that...

I was wondering about whether to simply export the user list to a spreadsheet on my local PC and create several 1,000-name email distribution lists and mail-merge them in Word/Outlook. It just seems like I'd have more control over user's data (and removal afterwards) that way. I could also personalise and make it look nicer than the plain-ASCII messages from phpBB. However not sure about the spam implications, nor how well Outlook handles such bulk lists (I use MS Office 2010).

Andre

[Mick]

I’d be inclined to have a read about sending emails ‘to all’ (mass email) as you may be in breach of GDPR if all the recipients haven’t given you permission to do so.

[andrewilley]

Exactly, that's why I want to do this before 25 May.

It's a one-off email letting users know the updated Policy and Terms, and saying I will be deleting any completely dormant accounts in a month or so unless the user chooses to visit the forums again in the meantime. And it would not be sent to any currently opted-out users anyway.

Andre

[Mick]

Can’t you put up an announcement and or use the Privacy Policy extension?

[andrewilley]

I put up an Annoucment already, but that only covers users who visit the forums regularly.

Andre

[Mick]

The ones who will read it are the ones coming to your board, the ones that don’t bother logging in any more probably don’t give a toss about GDPR anyway, worse still they could be dead.

[GanstaZ]

Isn't this "Edit global settings" section in ucp that covers what was mentioned above about mailing "Administrators can email me information: yes/no" ?

[andrewilley]

Isn't this "Edit global settings" section in ucp that covers what was mentioned above about mailing "Administrators can email me information: yes/no" ?

Yes, but after 25 May GDPR requires that option must be an actively Opted-In facility only, not a pre-ticked box which the user can untick if they wish to look it up.

Andre

[GanstaZ]

I don't see any problems with that. If a user doesn't want any info about privacy/rule changes, then s/he is ignoring gdpr regulations. That box can be removed after some sort of an announcement.

[2600]

I’d be inclined to have a read about sending emails ‘to all’ (mass email) as you may be in breach of GDPR if all the recipients haven’t given you permission to do so.

I wouldn't think so. I've been getting email after email of privacy updates all over the place because of this crap.

[andrewilley]

I wouldn't think so. I've been getting email after email of privacy updates all over the place because of this crap.

Ironic isn't it, the Eurocrats' snazzy new law aimed at improving privacy and reducing unwanted intrusion has effectively achieved just the opposite so far. It should go away after the 25th anyway.

Andre

[2600]

Yeah, it's all a bunch of BS, really. I use a script called CIDRAM and some of the signatures provided to it were hosted from a guy in Sweden. Well, as you can expect IP addresses are part of GDPR and he had to move the signatures to Github.

I have taken an approach myself in creating a global announcement about cookies, IP addresses and emails and added that extension where one has the ability to delete their account. I live in the U.S. and the server is in the U.S. but I don't want a notice in the mail from Brussels. Granted I'd tell them to go to hell, but then it means I most likely wouldn't be able to step foot in Europe without being arrested. And I don't want that. So I chose just to try and comply. Since I use CIDRAM and block many, many cloud/servers ASNs at the CloudFlare level I doubt they could scan my server for compliance if that's what they will do.

My domain register is Namesilo and I just got an email from them stating all new domains will default to domain privacy. This is what it has become. I do use their free privacy already though.